ISFJ Personal Growth

Written by contributing author Robert G. Heyward

What does Success
mean to an ISFJ?

ISFJs are the homemakers, carers and facilitators of the
world. Their strong sense of duty,
hard-working tendencies and ability to respond quickly to what is suitable to a
particular situation are great assets.
With a dominant function that quickly grasps the qualities
inherent within the external world, and a secondary function that weighs such
perceptions against their value within this world, the ISFJ has a great talent
for discovering the aesthetic and essential qualities compatible with and
relevant to a particular real world situation. This means that, not only within
the world of objects, but also in their relationships with people, ISFJs are
gifted with the ability to recognize and understand the comfort and
surroundings suitable to a secure and pleasing existence. And they can do this
with a decisiveness which might make others wonder if the ISFJ was not in fact getting
their answers from some form of intuitive understanding rather than what is
really a vast library of carefully related memory images and value judgments. An
ISFJ will always feel best when their world a place of quality and reassurance,
both for themselves and others. Success for an ISFJ means being able to fulfil
a role providing value for others and ordering their world in a way in which
safety and security is balanced against a genuine respect for the aesthetic and
positive qualities of life.

Allowing Your ISFJ Strengths
to Flourish

As an ISFJ, you have
gifts that are specific to your personality type that aren't natural strengths
for other types. By recognizing your special gifts and encouraging their growth
and development, you will more readily see your place in the world, and how you
can better use your talents to achieve your dreams.

Nearly all ISFJs will recognize the following characteristics in themselves. They should embrace and nourish these strengths:

You are adept at seeing the right balance, the best way to make
the world look and feel good. This talent enables you to make your world
reflect your inner self and become a place of security and growth in which
others can feel at ease too.

You have a gift for knowing what will make another person feel better
about the world and themselves. Your valuable input to their world comes back
to you in ways which aid your own personal development.

You see clearly what is right and wrong, what grates on yourself
and others, what works for harmony and what does not. Your clear recognition of
these things gains you the confidence and respect of others.

You have a great memory for things, places and events, their
curious details and the relationships between them. More than this, you also
remember what was both good and bad about these things. These skills show in
your ability to give no nonsense advice and aid to others.

Within yourself you know, even if others do not realise it, that
for as long as they are trying to do their best, you will hold the line with
them to the very end. You see this as simply doing the right thing, but in fact
it is a special virtue and makes you one
of the most worthy of partners and friends when the chips are down.

You work hard to get the job done, and you can be counted on the
stay with it till it is finished.

ISFJs who have a strongly express Extraverted Feeling function will find they also enjoy these special gifts:

Work is never a chore to you, but a gift you offer to the world.

In your relationships you are able to clearly show others how
you feel about them.

Others will always feel at ease in your home and presence.

Your efforts always seem to be appreciated by those around you.

You will try to find pleasing ways to settle differences and to
find the most satisfying solutions to both your own and others' difficulties.

More often than not, you will know exactly the right thing to
do, say, buy or create to make things better or move things toward a valid
human solution to a problem.

You will clearly see the conditions underlying a situation and
their effects on the persons within it, enabling you to see ways of changing
things for the better. In this sense,
you may be a powerful agent for social justice.

Potential Problem
Areas

With any gift of
strength, there is an associated weakness. The strong expression of any
function can overshadow others, whilst at the same time its own associated and
unexpressed inferior function can mine the unconscious mind and throw up
annoying resistances and unsettling emotions. We value our strengths, but we
often curse and - even more limiting to our potential development - ignore our
weaknesses. To grow as a person and get what we want out of life, we must not
only capitalize upon our strengths, but also face our weaknesses and deal with
them. That means taking a hard look at our personality type's potential problem
areas.

ISFJs are kind, steady
and responsible beings with many special gifts. I would like for the ISFJ to
keep in mind some of the many positive things associated with being an ISFJ as
they read some of this more negative material. Also remember that the
weaknesses associated with being an ISFJ are natural to your type. Although it
may be depressing to read about your type's weaknesses, please remember that we
offer this information to enact positive change. We want people to grow into
their own potential, and to live happy and successful lives.

Many of the weaker
characteristics that are found in ISFJs are due to their dominant and
Introverted Sensing function overshadowing the rest of their personality. This
generally results in two notable effects: their Extraverted Feeling function is
unable to balance their sharply rendered inner perceptions with a sense of human
value, whilst at the same time these very perceptions often hint at strange
associations and consequences which seem always to hover darkly in the
background of the world

In such cases, an
ISFJ may show some or all of the following weaknesses in varying degrees:

May find difficulty expressing their feelings
without fear or anger.

May be unable to correctly judge what really is for the best

May wrongly suspect others of having hidden motives or agendas

May be unable to shrug off feelings impending disaster

May be unable to acknowledge or hear anything that goes against
their certainty about the "correct" or "right" way to do things

May have a tendency to blame particular persons
for disturbing or upsetting "their world" by simply being who they are

May come across to others as cold and insensitive to anything but
another's ability to fit in with and support their own judgments

May be unnecessarily harsh or strict about appropriate
social behaviour

May be oblivious to what others think about them

May come across as rigid, inflexible or even cold
and uncaring to others, without being aware of it

May be unable to understand verbal logic, and
quickly cut off other's explanations

May value their own certainties about the world and its problems far above others

May be quite falsely certain of their influence upon, and understandingof others

May react with anger or distress when someone
expresses disagreement with their view of the world, or disapproval of their
judgements

May favour their judgements to the degree that
they are unable to notice the pain or difficulty such judgements might
cause others

Under great stress, are likely to make
outrageously harsh and uncaringly selfish survival oriented decisions

Explanation of
Problems

Nearly all of the
problematic characteristics described above can be attributed in various
degrees to the ISFJs internally mapped and abstract view of the world not being
successfully coupled to an appropriate level of Extroverted feeling. Without
this rational external balance, the ISFJs opposing unconscious functions can wreak
havoc upon the order and sense of the ISFJs perceptions and ideas. ISFJs are
usually stable, certain, reliable and deft in their approach to life. But if
unbalanced, they are likely to treat any point of view other than their own with
a kind of cold dismay, and if pressed hard will tend to shut out the existence
of problems caused by others differing attitudes and opinions. If the ISFJ does
not learn how to deal with the wide range of differing world views they come
into contact with, they can find themselves closed into a lonely little corner
of the world in which only their own feelings of safety and certainty are
maintained. This is a natural survival technique for the extreme ISFJ
personality.

The main driver to
the ISFJ personality is Introverted Sensing, whose function is to define the
properties of and locate and recognise the sometimes abstract and innate
qualities of and between the objects of the outer world. If an ISFJ's picture of the
world is threatened by external influences, the ISFJ generally tries to shut
such new information out of their lives. This is totally natural, and works
well to protect the individual psyche from getting hurt. However, the ISFJ who
exercises this type of self-protection regularly will become closed within a
small and ever decreasing circle of those family and friends who do not
actively disturb their increasingly narrow and rigid world view. They will
always find justification for their own inappropriate behaviours, and will
always find fault with the outside world for problems that they have in their
lives. It will be difficult for them to maintain close personal relationships
because they will have a negatively polarised and therefore limited ability to
communicate outside of the box of their own security needs.

It is not an
uncommon tendency for the ISFJ to support their ideas and values by using only
the value judgements they make about the world and other peoples behaviour. However,
if this tendency is given free reign, the resulting ISFJ personality is too
self-centred to be happy or successful. Since the ISFJ's dominant function is
Introverted Sensing, they must balance this with an auxiliary Extraverted Feeling
function. If the ISFJ uses Extraverted Feeling only to serve the purposes of
Introverted Sensing, then the ISFJ is not using Extraversion effectively at
all. As a result, the ISFJ does not sufficiently recognise and sympathise with
the way feelings effect the behaviour of others in the world to have a good
sense of why things happen as they do. They see nothing but their own
perspective, and deal with the world only so far as they need to in order to
support their perspective. These individuals usually come across as somewhat
judgemental and full of fixed and often rather ambiguously polarised ideas
about the world. Other people are often surprised by the vehemence of their
ideas and are usually unable to understand how they came by them.

Solutions

To grow as an individual,
the ISFJ needs to focus on opening their perspective to include a more accurate
picture of the feelings and value judgements of others. In order to be in a
position in which the ISFJ is able to perceive and consider data that is
foreign to their internal value system, the ISFJ needs to recognise that their
world view is not threatened by the new information. The ISFJ must consciously
tell himself/herself that emotional affects in others are not unrelated to reality;
that the feelings of others are also just and valid within a wider and less
rigorous vision of the world.

The ISFJ who is
concerned with personal growth will pay close attention to their motivation for
deciding what is good and bad, right and wrong. Do they try to find the feeling
values of others in a situation? Or, do they value only those feelings which
support a personal idea or cause? At the moment when something is felt, is the
ISFJ only concerned with whether that feeling supports something they recognise
as correct? Or is she/he concerned with becoming truly empathetic? To achieve a
better understanding of others and the world in which they live, the ISFJ
should try to put themselves into the minds of others, to locate and recognise
how they have come to feel the way they do, before making judgements. They
should consciously be aware of their tendency to discard anything that doesn't
agree with their carefully ordered concepts, and work towards lessening this
tendency. They should try to feel the way others would feel in situations, without
making personal judgments about the actual situations. In general, they should
work on exercising their Feeling in a truly extraverted sense. In other words,
they should use Feeling to locate the their true connections to and
relationship with others for the sake of gaining a wider perspective, rather
than only allowing such feeling values
to support their own conclusions. The ISFJ who successfully feels things
objectively may be quite a powerful force for positive change.

Living Happily in
our World as an ISFJ

Some ISFJs have
difficulty fitting into our society. Their problems are often a result of an inability
to flow with what is, a too negative or correcting attitude which dismays
others, or unrealistic ideals and ideas about the world. These issues mostly stem
from using Extraverted Feeling in a diminished manner: the lack of a strong
externally focused value system allowing an often ambiguous and yet strongly
defended world view which has little relation to concrete reality to control
the personality. An ISFJ who attempts to feel and value the feelings of others for
the sake of understanding the world around them, rather than quickly deciding
how they and they alone feel, will have a clearer, more objective understanding
of how society is dependant not only upon structure and correct behaviour, but
also how human values make it just what it is and not something else perhaps
more desirable. He or she will also be more comfortable and less likely to
demand that the world and the behaviour of others conform to some abstract code
of being. Such well-adjusted ISFJs will fit happily into our society. Unless
you really understand Psychological Type and the nuances of the various
personality functions, it's a difficult task to suddenly start to use Feeling
in an unambiguous and totally extraverted direction. It's difficult to even
understand what that means, much less to incorporate that directive into your
life. With that in mind, I am providing some specific suggestions that may help
you to begin exercising your Extraverted Feeling more fully:

Take care to try and discover why others feel the
way they do. Try to notice the connections between their feelings and the
way they see the world. Don't immediately compare your own value
judgements about the world to theirs; simply accept that for them this is
a real and perfectly valid way of responding.

Think of those times and situations in your life when
you felt misunderstood or disregarded by others. Now try to understand how
one or two other people would see the situation. Don't try to assume they
would judge as you do: "she would have to feel the same way if that
happened to her", or "he would change his tune if he saw things
from my point of view". Rather, try to understand how they would truly
see the situation. Would it be seen as a problem, or as an opportunity?
Would it be taken seriously or lightly? Try to determine their point of
view without passing judgment or comparing it to your own.

When having a conversation with a friend or
relative, dedicate at least half of your time to finding out how the other
person feels about what they are describing. Concentrate on really sensing
their emotional state. Tell them how you feel and compare. Ask questions
about why they feel as they do.

Think of the people who are closest to you. As
you think of each person, tell yourself "this person has their own
life going on, and they are more concerned with their own life than they
are with mine." Remember that this doesn't mean that they don't care
about you. It's the natural order of things. Try to visualize what that
person is feeling right now. What emotions are they enacting, what
thoughts are they having? Don't pass judgment, or compare their situation
to your own.

Try to identify the personality type of everyone
that you come into contact with for any length of time.

Ten Rules to Live By
to Achieve ISFJ Success

1.Feed Your Strengths! Let your talent for
recognising harmony and balance spill out into the world around you, show your
gifts to the world. Allow yourself to take opportunities to design, reorganise
and rebalance things to make your home and work environments better for
yourself and others. Find work or a hobby which allows you to realise these
strengths.

2.Face Your Weaknesses! Realize and accept that some
things are never going to be how you would like them to be. Understand that
other peoples feelings are sometimes more important than whether they are right
or wrong. Facing and dealing with discord or differences in others doesn't mean
that you have to change who you are; it means that you are giving yourself
opportunities to grow. By facing your weaknesses, you honour your true self and
that of others.

3.Discover the World of Others. Don't let yourself fall into
the trap of thinking you always know what is right for others. Open your heart
to the possibility of understanding that their true needs are something that
must be discovered through relationship, and recognition that their world might
be very different, yet just as valid as your own.

4.Don't be too hasty. Try to let things settle
before you make a judgement, allowing others to discover the best for
themselves while you feel your way into their way of seeing things.

5.Look Carefully at the World. Remember, things are not
always what they seem on the surface. You might need to look deeper to discover
the truth, particularly when it seems you are sure of your first quick
judgement. There are layers of meaning and truth beneath everything.

6.Try to Let Others Take Some
of the Load.
By letting others help, you are not letting things get out of control, but are
validating their own need to be a part of your life. Remember, it is better to guide
another to see your point of view than keeping them out of the picture.

7.Be Accountable to Others. Remember that they need to
understand you and your needs too. Express your feelings and reasons and let
them become partners to your goals.

8.Don't Hem Yourself in.
Staying in your comfort zone is self defeating
in the end. Try to make every day one where you get out and discover a little
something different about the world and others. This will broaden your horizons
and bring new ideas and opportunities into focus.

9.Assume the Best and Seek for
it.
Don't wait for others to live up to your expectations. Every person has a
goldmine of worth in them, just as every situation can be turned to some good.
If you let yourself believe this, you will find yourself discovering ways to
make it true for you.

10.When in Doubt, Ask For Help! Don't let your sense of self
sufficiency leave you on the horns of a dilemma or lead you into disaster. If
you are uncertain of something or someone then get input from others you trust.